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Jul 5
Had to start a new post because I can't add anymore to the other link so all my shit will be added to this link at least for now until I gotta create a new one 😜😜😜😜

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@SurreyRCMP @surreyps @LangleyRCMP

@ChrisPentecos @Nncim15 @LangleyResident @BarbaraDoduk @RegretlessBee @Cdnwatcher @Istandtoreason @facepalmchris @trustednerd @felixcruggins @CultureGuard @WaxMyBallsShow @FranLa9 @kfurneaux23 @VernThurston @JonYaniv @JNonsense46242
@SurreyRCMP @surreyps @LangleyRCMP @ChrisPentecos @Nncim15 @LangleyResident @BarbaraDoduk @RegretlessBee @Cdnwatcher @Istandtoreason @facepalmchris @trustednerd @felixcruggins @CultureGuard @WaxMyBallsShow @FranLa9 @kfurneaux23 @VernThurston @JonYaniv @JNonsense46242 @threadreaderapp unroll
Read 3 tweets
Jul 5
Jews of Babylon (1/3)

Jews of Babylon: Before There Was a "Middle East"

Jesus was a Middle Eastern Jew. So were these people for 2,500 years before him, and for two thousand years after.

Chapter One: Before There Was a "Middle East"

[Image: Rabbeinu Yosef Chaim, the "Ben Ish Chai" β€” photographed at age 26, decades before he would go on to lead Baghdad Jewry for fifty years, until his death in 1909]

Look at this face. The long black beard, the ornate turban, the sharp gaze. This is not a portrait of some exotic figure from a faraway place. This is a young man who would go on to spend fifty years at the head of a community thousands of years old β€” a community that existed before there was even a concept called "the Middle East," and long before the word "Zionism" was ever written.

The caption beneath the original photograph gives him a title worth pausing on: Reish Galuta d'Bavel β€” "Head of the Exile of Babylon." The very same title, carried across seven centuries, that you're about to meet again below.

2,500 Years Before the Word "Zionism" Was Written

When Jerusalem burned in 586 BCE, and the exiles of Judah were led to Babylon, Babylon became the center of Jewish thought for a thousand years. The Babylonian Talmud was composed there. In the academies of Sura and Pumbedita β€” the two central centers of learning for world Jewry, on the banks of the Euphrates β€” sat the Geonim: the supreme spiritual leadership for all of world Jewry. When a Jewish community anywhere on earth found itself grappling with a question of religious law, it sent that question to Babylon, and received back a responsum β€” a detailed answer that itself became a body of religious literature.

A Lord's Procession

Alongside the Geonim stood a separate institution: the Exilarch β€” a political leader whose authority the Caliph himself formally recognized. What did this actually look like? We have a remarkable account, and it doesn't even come from a Jewish source. Benjamin of Tudela, a Spanish-Jewish traveler, visited Baghdad in 1168 and documented the moment when the Exilarch β€” called by Muslims "our lord, son of King David" β€” presented himself before the Caliph:

"The procession of the Exilarch would wind its way along the festive streets of Baghdad. The community's leader wore garments embroidered in silk, with a white turban studded with precious stones. He had a retinue of horsemen, and at the head of the procession, a herald cried out: 'Make way for the lord, son of David.' When the procession reached the palace courtyard, the Caliph would stand to receive the Exilarch, seating him on a throne facing his own."

Benjamin of Tudela notes that at that time, about 40,000 Jews lived in Baghdad.

A Cord That Was Never Cut

Throughout all those centuries, the Jews of Babylon maintained an unbroken connection to the Land of Israel. In 1853, a group of immigrants from Iraq founded their own synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem. And perhaps the most touching story of all: when Rabbeinu Yosef Chaim β€” the very man pictured above β€” returned in 1869 from a pilgrimage to the Land of Israel, he did not come back empty-handed. He brought sacks of soil from the Holy Land and scattered them across the floor of the synagogue where he prayed in Baghdad.

This Was Not a Utopia β€” But It Also Wasn't What People Assume

To say there were only golden years would be a lie. But the unbroken thread β€” 2,500 years of communal, economic, and spiritual continuity β€” is exactly what's missing from the story most Americans know. "We didn't know there were Jews from Iraq." They're right that they didn't know. Because no one ever told them.Image
Jews of Babylon (2/3)

Chapter Two: The Torah That Came Out of Baghdad

[Image: The title page of Kaf HaChaim, the edition published by Moshe Sofer β€” son of Rabbi Yaakov Chaim Sofer β€” in Jerusalem]

[Image: An old poster, framed with olive-branch ornamentation and a line from the Lamentations liturgy: "Fortunate is the eye that beheld all these." Fourteen faces β€” white beards, turbans, embroidered skullcaps]

Here is another image. An old poster, bordered in olive branches, with a line from the traditional lament for the destroyed Temple: "Fortunate is the eye that beheld all these." Fourteen faces β€” white beards, turbans, embroidered skullcaps. These are not statesmen. These are the sages.

At the center: Rabbeinu Yosef Chaim, the Ben Ish Chai. Around him: his students, his sons, and those who carried his legacy forward. Among them is a name that won't mean much if you're American β€” but means everything if you're a Sephardic Jew (using the term the way it's used across the Middle East and North Africa, not only for those descended from medieval Spain): Rabbi Yaakov Chaim Sofer.

This Story Begins in a Schoolhouse, Not a Pogrom

In late-nineteenth-century Baghdad stood a Torah academy called Midrash Beit Zilkha β€” yes, the same Zilkha family that built the first branch-banking network in the Arab world. They didn't just accumulate wealth. They invested it in Torah. At this academy studied a boy named Yaakov Chaim, son of a humble Torah scribe, who received personal ordination from the Ben Ish Chai himself.

In 1904, Yaakov Chaim Sofer immigrated to Jerusalem. Not fleeing. Not expelled. Immigrating, by choice.

Forty Years of a Single Labor

In Jerusalem's Beit Yisrael neighborhood, Rabbi Yaakov Chaim sat for forty years and wrote. The result: Kaf HaChaim β€” ten volumes of Jewish legal rulings. Look at the title page: this is a book reprinted by the author's own son, Moshe Sofer, who carried his father's work forward "for the merit of the many." Three generations β€” the father in Baghdad, the son in Jerusalem, and the great-grandson who later founded an entire yeshiva bearing his name β€” all part of one unbroken chain.

This is a book that Rabbi Ovadia Yosef himself edited and revised in a later edition. It's a book that Israel's current Sephardic Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, still cites as foundational.

Recognition That Crossed Communities β€” Before There Was Even a State

Beneath the author's name on the title page are printed rabbinic endorsements. Who signed them? Not only leading figures of Middle Eastern Jewry. Also, Rabbi Chaim Berlin, a well-known Ashkenazi rabbi of Jerusalem. Also, a rabbi who had served, in turn, in Moscow and then in Chicago before settling in Safed.

Before there was a State of Israel β€” before anyone spoke of "Ashkenazi" and "Sephardic" as competing political categories β€” the Torah that came out of Baghdad was already speaking to the whole house of Israel.

From Baghdad to Jerusalem, from 1904 to today: this isn't history. It's a living chain of transmission.Image
Image
Jews of Babylon (3/3)

Chapter Three: The Modern Flourishing

[Image: King Faisal I's visit to the Jewish community of Baghdad, 1925. At center: Sir Sassoon Eskell. Beside him: Menachem Saleh Daniel, Rabbi Ezra Dangoor, Rabbi Sasson Kadoorie, and community leaders]

Look at this photograph: men in Western suits and red tarbooshes β€” the felt caps common across the Ottoman world β€” seated in formal rows. This is not a photograph of refugees. This is a photograph of a king visiting his community.

A City That Was One-Third Jewish

In the 1920s, as Iraq was reborn as an independent state, Jews made up roughly 35 to 40 percent of Baghdad's population. Not a minority on the margins. A decisive share of the city itself.

The Finance Minister Was Jewish β€” And He Wasn't Alone

In 1921, when King Faisal I was crowned over independent Iraq, he appointed Sir Sassoon Eskell as his Finance Minister. Eskell sat alongside Gertrude Bell and T.E. Lawrence in shaping the architecture of the new state itself.

But Eskell wasn't a single symbolic figure. The constitution he helped draft guaranteed permanent Jewish representation β€” six seats out of eighty in parliament, one out of twenty in the senate. Over the following two decades, Jewish names appear again and again in the Iraqi parliament: Yosef al-Kabir, Shalom Darwish, Naeim Zilkha β€” a lawyer and judge who dared to criticize the government from within β€” Salman Shina, Yechezkel Shem-Tov, Salih Kahtan, Avraham Chaim.

Beside Eskell in that same photograph sits Menachem Saleh Daniel β€” Eskell's own uncle. A man who had already served, in 1877, as Baghdad's representative in the Ottoman parliament, before Iraq existed as an independent state at all. A man so wealthy that when King Faisal's palace was destroyed by flooding in 1926, the king and his family moved into Daniel's own home until a new palace could be built. When Daniel died in 1940, his son Ezra inherited his senate seat β€” and served until 1952.

It Wasn't Confined to Politics

Jews were pioneers of modern Iraqi journalism and among its foremost poets. The brothers Saleh and Daoud al-Kuwaity wrote the music that became the national sound of Iraq. Jews spoke Arabic as their mother tongue, wrote poetry in it, and edited newspapers in it.

Here is the paradox an American audience often struggles to grasp: these people were not "Jews who happened to live in Iraq." They were Iraqis β€” an inseparable part of the national fabric they themselves helped weave β€” who also happened to be Jewish.

What Happens When a House Is Erased

In 2016, real estate developers in Baghdad demolished Sassoon Eskell's historic villa. The Iraqi Muslim historian Nabil al-Rubaie β€” the same historian who documented that the graves of Menachem and Ezra Daniel in the city of Kifl had also been removed β€” responded with sorrow: "Every educated Iraqi knows who Yehezkel Sassoon was." And added, bitterly: "Thank you to our state, to our government, if this is how they honor him."

The houses vanished. The graves vanished. The memory, for those who bothered to keep it, did not.Image
Read 4 tweets
Jul 5
@Ardyth1 but this ugly perverted WEEEEEETARD taking pictures like this is ok right ??? πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”

x.com/i/status/20735… x.com/Ardyth1/status…Image
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@Ardyth1 @ChrisPentecos @Nncim15 @LangleyResident @BarbaraDoduk @RegretlessBee @Cdnwatcher @Istandtoreason @facepalmchris @trustednerd @felixcruggins @CultureGuard @WaxMyBallsShow @FranLa9 @kfurneaux23 @VernThurston @JonYaniv @JNonsense46242 @Ardyth1
@Ardyth1 @ChrisPentecos @Nncim15 @LangleyResident @BarbaraDoduk @RegretlessBee @Cdnwatcher @Istandtoreason @facepalmchris @trustednerd @felixcruggins @CultureGuard @WaxMyBallsShow @FranLa9 @kfurneaux23 @VernThurston @JonYaniv @JNonsense46242 @threadreaderapp unroll
Read 3 tweets
Jul 5
@Ardyth1 but this ugly perverted WEEEEEETARD taking pictures like this is ok right ??? πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”

x.com/i/status/20735… x.com/Ardyth1/status…Image
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@ChrisPentecos @Nncim15 @LangleyResident @BarbaraDoduk @RegretlessBee @Cdnwatcher @Istandtoreason @facepalmchris @trustednerd @felixcruggins @CultureGuard @WaxMyBallsShow @FranLa9 @kfurneaux23 @VernThurston @JonYaniv @JNonsense46242 @Ardyth1
@ChrisPentecos @Nncim15 @LangleyResident @BarbaraDoduk @RegretlessBee @Cdnwatcher @Istandtoreason @facepalmchris @trustednerd @felixcruggins @CultureGuard @WaxMyBallsShow @FranLa9 @kfurneaux23 @VernThurston @JonYaniv @JNonsense46242 @Ardyth1 @threadreaderapp unroll
Read 3 tweets
Jul 5
@Brianfreedom999 but him being the pervert that he is this is ok right??? πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”

x.com/i/status/20735… x.com/Brianfreedom99…Image
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@Brianfreedom999 @Brianfreedom999 @ChrisPentecos @Nncim15 @LangleyResident @BarbaraDoduk @RegretlessBee @Cdnwatcher @Istandtoreason @facepalmchris @trustednerd @felixcruggins @CultureGuard @WaxMyBallsShow @FranLa9 @kfurneaux23 @VernThurston @JonYaniv @JNonsense46242
@Brianfreedom999 @ChrisPentecos @Nncim15 @LangleyResident @BarbaraDoduk @RegretlessBee @Cdnwatcher @Istandtoreason @facepalmchris @trustednerd @felixcruggins @CultureGuard @WaxMyBallsShow @FranLa9 @kfurneaux23 @VernThurston @JonYaniv @JNonsense46242 @threadreaderapp unroll
Read 3 tweets
Jul 5
@Brianfreedom999 but him being the pervert that he is this is ok right??? πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”

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@Brianfreedom999 @ChrisPentecos @Nncim15 @LangleyResident @BarbaraDoduk @RegretlessBee @Cdnwatcher @Istandtoreason @facepalmchris @trustednerd @felixcruggins @CultureGuard @WaxMyBallsShow @FranLa9 @kfurneaux23 @VernThurston @JonYaniv @JNonsense46242 @Brianfreedom999
@Brianfreedom999 @ChrisPentecos @Nncim15 @LangleyResident @BarbaraDoduk @RegretlessBee @Cdnwatcher @Istandtoreason @facepalmchris @trustednerd @felixcruggins @CultureGuard @WaxMyBallsShow @FranLa9 @kfurneaux23 @VernThurston @JonYaniv @JNonsense46242 @threadreaderapp unroll
Read 3 tweets
Jul 5
@Brianfreedom999 but him being the pervert that he is this is ok right??? πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”πŸ€”

x.com/i/status/20735… x.com/Brianfreedom99…Image
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@Brianfreedom999 @ChrisPentecos @Nncim15 @LangleyResident @BarbaraDoduk @RegretlessBee @Cdnwatcher @Istandtoreason @facepalmchris @trustednerd @felixcruggins @CultureGuard @WaxMyBallsShow @FranLa9 @kfurneaux23 @VernThurston @JonYaniv @JNonsense46242 @Brianfreedom999
@Brianfreedom999 @ChrisPentecos @Nncim15 @LangleyResident @BarbaraDoduk @RegretlessBee @Cdnwatcher @Istandtoreason @facepalmchris @trustednerd @felixcruggins @CultureGuard @WaxMyBallsShow @FranLa9 @kfurneaux23 @VernThurston @JonYaniv @JNonsense46242 @threadreaderapp unroll
Read 3 tweets
Jul 5
Stop ending emails with 'Looking forward to hearing from you.'

It's passive. It puts the entire burden on the reader. And it gives them no reason to respond today instead of never.

Here are 4 closers that actually drive a reply:
1/ The Specific Ask

BAD: "Looking forward to hearing from you."
GOOD: "Can you confirm the budget by Thursday? I need it before the Friday sync."

Deadlines get answered. Vague sentiments get archived. Always give a specific timeline.
2/ The Next Step Declaration

BAD: "Looking forward to your thoughts."
GOOD: "I'll move forward with Option A unless you flag something by Wednesday."

"Silence-is-consent" forces action. They either object now or accept your plan.
Read 6 tweets
Jul 5
️⠀⠀

Gardening Plot: Puffapod
July 05th, 2026

️⠀⠀
Pagi itu, beberapa hari setelah pemindahan ke big pot, Keisha kembali datang ke greenhouse dengan langkah yang lebih ringan. Sejak memasuki ruangan, pandangannya langsung tertuju pada Puffapod miliknya.
Senyum kecil pun terukir ketika melihat tanaman itu kini telah mencapai 83% progress. Pertumbuhannya jauh lebih pesat dibanding sebelumnya; batangnya tampak semakin tebal, daunnya berkembang lebih lebar, dan warnanya terlihat sehat berkat ruang tanam baru yang diberikan.
Read 19 tweets
Jul 5
Franz Kafka revealed the reason why we often get tired of people.

In fact, we get tired of our own insincerity around them.

We are exhausted by a company where we cannot be genuine:οΏΌ
1. We rarely get tired of people as such, we get tired of the role we are forced to play next to them.
When it is not possible to be real next to, the psyche constantly keeps control: how to speak, how to react, what to hide.
This internal censorship requires a huge resource.οΏΌ
2. Insincerity almost always looks "decent."
You are polite, smile, keep the conversation going, agree where it is easier to agree.
But inside, there is a discrepancy between what you feel and what you demonstrate.οΏΌ
Read 6 tweets
Jul 4
Many people remember Huquq Allah but forget Huquq al-’Ibad.
Huquq Allah: Prayer, fasting, Hajj, and faith. Allah may forgive these through sincere repentance.
Huquq al-’Ibad: People’s rights - their dignity, honor, wealth, life, and fair treatment. These rights are not erased by repentance alone. They must be restored, or the person who was wronged must forgive.
Read 6 tweets
Jul 4
There is a verse in the Qur’an that stops you in your tracks. You may have recited it hundreds of times, but you don’t truly understand it until the day you experience it.
β€œAllah does not burden a soul beyond what it can bear.” (Qur’an 2:286)

Read that again.

Not: Allah does not test you.
Not: every trial will feel easy.

Beyond what it can bear.
Many people read this verse as comfort, until they face a trial that feels unbearable.

But the verse does not say you will always feel strong.

It tells you that Allah has given you the capacity to endure, even when you think you cannot.
Read 6 tweets

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